Independent Games Festival 2012 Winners

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 8, 2012

The problems of the IGF largely derive from its current size and importance. So really, these are the right problems to have. As Brandon Boyer said in his intro to this years’ awards ceremony, they are constantly reevaluating what they are supposed to be for the indie games community. There were 50 games submitted to the first IGF. I was at that GDC (or was it still CGDC back then?), and I remember not paying much attention to these little games with the finalists standing next to the monitors looking a little lost in the chaos that was the expo floor.

Times have changed. I was one of the over 800 entrants this year with Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, which sadly didn’t get nominated for any of the categories. But I still watched (streaming) the IGF awards ceremony with my usual enthusiasm. Andy was cheesy with his Polynesian explorer analogy, nobody proposed to each other, and I didn’t always agree with the final choices, but I couldn’t help but be thrilled by the really cool indie games on display, or by the people winning the awards.

Anyway, you can check out the winners here:

Gamasutra’s IGF Awards Report

The grand prize winner was Fez, which wasn’t much of a surprise. Yeah, I could go on about “indie darlings” and the composition of the judges, but the former doesn’t mean that Fez isn’t worthy of the honor, and for the latter – well, the judges are volunteers, and anybody can volunteer ( I don’t know if that means you’ll be selected or not, but anybody can volunteer, and it sure looks like they need more volunteers ).  I was thrilled with Frozen Synapse winning the audience award, too, as 1) I am a fan of the game, and 2) It’s a TURN-BASED TACTICAL game! Yeeeeaaaaah!

But the best thing about the awards – even watching them streaming online – is that there is that the enthusiasm for indie gaming is infectious. Maybe it’s just something with how my brain is wired, but how can I not watch these awards and immediately be seized with the desire to start designing, coding, and creating? The winners are almost secondary. The bottom line – for me – is that these folks are artists doing some really, really cool things in the interactive digital medium. I watch it and remember why I love indie games.

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 2 Comments to Read



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